Many women (actresses, directors, etc.) have spoken up about abuse or similarly difficult situations from years past. Now, actress Natalie Portman has had to address a past encounter that she experienced very differently than the man who wrote about it: Moby.

What’s the story here?

This rumor begins with Moby himself. In case you aren’t familiar, Moby (Richard Melville Hall) is a musician who was big in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The last decade or so has not been as successful for him, and he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction in the early ‘00s.

Recently, Moby’s second memoir, Then It Fell Apart, was released. Among other things, he speaks about briefly dating Portman, claiming that she was 20 at the time and he “tried to be her boyfriend” before she broke things off.

Here’s what Portman says

As Portman remembered it, things went a bit differently. In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Portman says she was “a fan” and, after meeting following one of his shows in 1999, they “hung out a handful of times.” It then became apparent to her that Moby, who was in his 30s at the time, was “interested in [her] in a way that felt inappropriate.”

“I was surprised to hear that he characterised the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school. He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t.” Portman continued, “I was a teenager. I had just turned 18. There was no fact checking from him or his publisher – it almost feels deliberate. That he used this story to sell his book was very disturbing to me. It wasn’t the case.”

Moby digs in deeper

Rather than apologizing now that he knows how Portman feels, or even just saying nothing, Moby doubled down in an Instagram post after the interview came out. He posted a photo of the two of them in which he has his arm around the actress, who many on social media felt looked very uncomfortable at that moment.

The caption is cringeworthy to say the least, with Moby referring to the story in a well-respected publication as “a gossip piece” and saying that he has “lots of corroborating photo evidence, etc.” in the book. He adds a P.S., writing that he believes Portman might “regret” dating him, “but it doesn’t alter the actual facts.”